Hi OOW members! Check out this new book by Megan Tobias Neely:

CITATION:

Neely, Megan Tobias. 2022. Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

About the Book:

Who do you think of when you imagine a hedge fund manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? These tropes capture the public imagination of a successful hedge fund manager. But behind the designer suits, helicopter commutes, and illicit pursuits are the everyday stories of people who work in the hedge fund industry—many of whom don’t realize they fall within the 1 percent that drives the divide between the richest and the rest. Hedged Out gives readers an outsider’s insider perspective on Wall Street and its enduring culture of inequality.

Hedged Out dives into the upper echelons of Wall Street, where elite white masculinity is the standard measure for the capacity to manage risk and insecurity. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers protect their interests by working long hours and building tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them. Using ethnographic vignettes and her own industry experience, Neely showcases the voices of managers and other workers to illustrate how this industry of politically mobilized elites excludes people on the basis of race, class, and gender. Neely shows how this system of elite power and privilege not only sustains itself but builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources. Hedged Out explains why the hedge fund industry generates extreme wealth, why mostly white men benefit, and why reforming Wall Street will create a more equal society.

Use source code 21W2240 for a 30% discount at UCPress.

Hi OOW members! Check out this new publication from Michael Wallace, Allen Hyde and Todd Vachon:

CITATION:

Wallace, Michael, Allen Hyde, Todd E. Vachon. 2022. “Political Party Control, Union Strength, and Neoliberalism: Accounting for Rising Income Inequality across the 50 U.S. States since 1950.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2022.100677

ABSTRACT:

This paper uses power resource theory to investigate the determinants of rising income inequality in the U.S. states from 1951–2018. Specifically, we analyze how political party control of national- and state-level government, presidential and gubernatorial election cycles, union strength and state right-to-work laws affect the Gini index and the Theil index—two measures that tap middle-class and upper-tail income inequality. A major contribution is to probe more deeply than previous research the historical and regional contingency of these processes by examining contrasting patterns between the Keynesian (1951–1980) and neoliberal (1981–2018) periods and between the Non- South and the South. We conduct three primary analyses. First, we explore the effects of these determinants over the entire period, net of other covariates. Second, we explore historical contingency by investigating how these effects differ during the Keynesian and neoliberal periods. Third, we explore regional contingency by examining differences in effects between the Non-Southern and Southern regions of the country. We find consistent evidence that political and labor power resources matter in the determination of income inequality; moreover, how they matter differs in substantively and theoretically important ways across period and region. We conclude with a discussion of what the results suggest for future developments in U.S. income inequality.

Hi OOW members! Check out this new book from Joya Misra and Kyla Walters:

Citation: Misra, Joya and Kyla Walters. 2022. Walking Mannequins: How Race and Gender Inequalities Shape Retail Clothing Work. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 

Summary: In malls across the United States, clothing retail workers navigate low wages and unpredictable schedules. Despite these problems, they devote time and money to mirror the sleek mannequins stylishly adorned with the latest merchandise. Bringing workers’ voices to the fore, sociologists Joya Misra and Kyla Walters demonstrate how employers reproduce gendered and racist “beauty” standards by regulating workers’ size and look. Interactions with customers, coworkers, and managers further reinforce racial hierarchies. New surveillance technologies also lead to ineffective corporate decision-making based on flawed data. By focusing on the interaction of race, gender, and surveillance, Walking Mannequins sheds important new light on the dynamics of retail work in the twenty-first century.

You can buy it here with the source code 21W2240 at checkout for a discount!

Hi OOW! Check out this new article by Letian Zhang:

CITATION:

Zhang, L. Shaking Things Up: Disruptive Events and Inequality. American Journal of Sociology 2021 127:2, 376-440

ABSTRACT:

This article develops a theory of how disruptive events could reduce racial and gender inequality in organizations. Despite pressure from regulators and advocates, racial and gender inequality in the workplace remains high. The article theorizes that because such inequality is often reinforced by organizational inertia, disruptive changes that shake up old hierarchies, break down routines, and shift culture could offer an opportunity for racial minority and women workers to advance. The author tests this theory by examining 37,343 mergers and acquisitions in the United States from 1971 to 2015. Using a difference-in-differences design, the author finds that although acquisitions lead to occupational reconfigurations that favor higher-skilled workers, they also improve the managerial representation of racial minorities and women and reduce racial and gender segregation in the acquired workplace. These findings suggest that certain radical organizational changes could significantly reduce racial and gender inequality.

Hi OOW members! Please check out this new article from OOW member Daniel Auguste, Stephen Roll and Mathieu Despard:

CITATION:

Daniel Auguste, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, The Precarity of Self-Employment among Low- and Moderate-Income Households, Social Forces, 2022;, soab171, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab171

ABSTRACT:

Many people in the United States have achieved economic stability through self-employment and are often seen as embracing the entrepreneurial spirit and seizing opportunity. Yet, research also suggests that self-employment may be precarious for many people in the lower socioeconomic strata. Drawing on a unique dataset that combines longitudinal survey data with administrative tax data for a sample of low- and moderate-income (LMI) workers, we bring new evidence to bear on this debate by examining the link between self-employment and economic insecurity. Overall, our results show that self-employment is associated with greater economic insecurity among LMI workers compared with wage-and-salary employment. For instance, compared with their wage-and-salary counterparts, the self-employed have 78, 168, and 287 percent greater odds of having an income below basic expenses, and experiencing an unexpected income decline and high levels of income volatility, respectively. We also find that differences in financial endowment and access to health insurance are key drivers in explaining the relationship between employment type and economic insecurity, as being able to access $2,000 in an emergency greatly lowers the odds of budgetary constraint, whereas lack of health insurance increases those odds. These findings suggest that formal work arrangements with wages and benefits offered by an employer promotes greater economic stability among LMI workers compared with informal work arrangements via self-employment. We discuss implications of these results for future research and policy initiatives seeking to promote economic wellbeing through entrepreneurship.

Hi OOW members! Here is a methods article from OOW Member Deni Mazrekaj‘s recent work:

CITATION:

1. Mazrekaj D, Wursten J. Stata tip 142: joinby is the real merge m:m. The Stata Journal. 2021;21(4):1065-1068. doi:10.1177/1536867X211063416

ABSTRACT:

The merge command is one of Stata’s most used commands and works fine as long as the match key is unique in one of the datasets (that is, merge 1:1, 1:m, or m:1 situations). However, when the match key contains duplicates in either dataset, Stata gives an error message saying that the key variable(s) do not uniquely identify observations in master or using dataset. This article offers examples and tools for working with names in a data set on Stata.

Hi OOW members! Check out this new article by Shaul Duke.

CITATION:

Duke, S.A. Deny, dismiss and downplay: developers’ attitudes towards risk and their role in risk creation in the field of healthcare-AI. Ethics Inf Technol 24, 1 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-022-09627-0

ABSTRACT:

Developers are often the engine behind the creation and implementation of new technologies, including in the artificial intelligence surge that is currently underway. In many cases these new technologies introduce significant risk to affected stakeholders; risks that can be reduced and mitigated by such a dominant party. This is fully recognized by texts that analyze risks in the current AI transformation, which suggest voluntary adoption of ethical standards and imposing ethical standards via regulation and oversight as tools to compel developers to reduce such risks. However, what these texts usually sidestep is the question of how aware developers are to the risks they are creating with these new AI technologies, and what their attitudes are towards such risks. This paper asks to rectify this gap in research, by analyzing an ongoing case study. Focusing on six Israeli AI startups in the field of radiology, I carry out a content analysis of their online material in order to examine these companies’ stances towards the potential threat their automated tools pose to patient safety and to the work-standing of healthcare professionals. Results show that these developers are aware of the risks their AI products pose, but tend to deny their own role in the technological transformation and dismiss or downplay the risks to stakeholders. I conclude by tying these findings back to current risk-reduction recommendations with regards to advanced AI technologies, and suggest which of them hold more promise in light of developers’ attitudes.

Check out this recent article by OOW members Laura Doering and Tyler Wry:

CITATION: Doering, Laura, and Tyler Wry. “The Challenges of Supporting Necessity Entrepreneurs: Understanding Loan Officer Exit in Microfinance.” Journal of Business Venturing 37, no. 2 (March 2022): 106189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2022.106189.

ABSTRACT: Necessity entrepreneurship can serve as a pathway out of poverty for low-income individuals, with microfinance often providing important financial support. Yet the relational lending stra-
tegies common among microfinance institutions may influence loan officer turnover and, in turn,
compromise entrepreneurs’ access to credit. While there is some reason to suspect that relational
lending with poor entrepreneurs will increase retention, we propose that serving the poor may
make loan officers more likely to quit: loan officers in commercial microfinance institutions are
unlikely to have strong commitments to poverty alleviation and may be taxed by the challenging
fieldwork associated with lending in poor areas. Qualitative and quantitative data from a
microfinance bank in Latin America support our expectations, showing that exit becomes more
likely when loan officers’ work involves more poor clients and that the effect is strongest when
such work demands intensive fieldwork in low-income areas. Supplementary analyses of trends
across the global microfinance industry demonstrate that poor clients have a stronger impact on
exit in for-profits than non-profits, suggesting that prosocial motives among non-profit employees
may have a buffering effect. Overall, our study reveals how providing services to necessity en-
trepreneurs can have negative, unexpected consequences for frontline employees

Check out this new publication my OOW members Luca Carbone and Jonathan Mijs:

ABSTRACT:

Extant research documents the impact of meritocratic narratives in news media that justify economic inequality. This paper inductively explores whether popular music is a source of cultural frames about inequality. We construct an original dataset combining user data from Spotify with lyrics from Genius and employ unsupervised computational text analysis to classify the content of the 3,660 most popular songs across 23 European countries. Drawing on Lizardo’s enculturation framework, we analyze lyrics through the lens of public culture and explore their link with individual beliefs as a reflection of personal culture. We find that, in more unequal societies, songs that frame inequalities as a structural issue (lyrics about ‘Struggle’ or omnipresent ‘Risks’) are more popular than those adopting a meritocratic frame (songs we describe as ‘Bragging Rights’ or those telling a ‘Rags to Riches’ tale). Moreover, we find that the presence in public culture of a certain frame is associated with the expression of frame-consistent individual beliefs about inequality. We conclude by reflecting on the promise of automatic text classification for the study of lyrics, the theorized role of popular music in the study of culture, and by proposing venues for future research.

CITATION: Luca Carbone & Jonathan Mijs (2022) Sounds like meritocracy to my ears: exploring the link between inequality in popular music and personal culture, Information, Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2021.2020870

Hi OOW Members! Check out this new publication from OOW Member Professor Curtis K. Chan and Ph.D. student Luke Hedden:

Citation: Chan, Curtis K. and Luke N. Hedden. 2021. “The Role of Discernment and Modulation in Enacting Occupational Values: How Career Advising Professionals Navigate Tensions with Clients.” Academy of Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.1014

Abstract: Enacting occupational values is vitally important to expert professionals’ solidarity and sense of purpose. Yet, many professionals face audiences in their relational contexts—especially powerful clients—who can hold incongruent values and may threaten professionals’ jurisdictional control. How can experts enact their values without jeopardizing their jurisdictional control amidst clients holding incongruent values? We examine career advisers in undergraduate business schools, whose occupational values often contrasted with values common among their student clients. Through an ethnography of one school’s career advisers, combined with interviews of such advisers throughout the U.S., we find that advisers navigated interactions by discerning student values and accordingly modulating their value-enactment practices through masking, moderating, or magnifying their values. This allowed advisers to uphold their jurisdictional control when facing students exhibiting incongruent values, while enacting their values with students exhibiting unclear or congruent values. We contribute to the relational perspective on occupations and professions by positing how discernment and modulation help experts navigate relational tensions by recognizing and drawing on intra-clientele heterogeneity, unpacking how professionals might not entirely resist or change amidst incongruence but instead pursue a more mixed approach, and highlighting when and how experts mask or moderate rather than overtly enact their values.